Zach Thomason and Douglas Gordon

00:06 And Douglas Gordon age 45 today's date is Monday, October 7th, 2019 Memphis Tennessee. My partner is Zach Thomason, and we are co-workers and Friends.

00:20 My name is Zach Thomason. I'm 33 years old. Today's date is Monday, October 7th 2019. We are in Memphis Tennessee. My partner is Doug Gordon and my relationship to him as we are friends and coworkers.

00:39 It was a cannula Tuesday interview because we are both in recovery from drugs and alcohol. And I think I wanted to focus on you to kind of talk about how instrumental you are. My recovery as my first sponsor and the co-worker and how you have led me giving me directions in my recovery. And I've come to consider you a dear friend and I look up to you and I seek guidance from you and I have this ability to be completely honest with you with no judgment and that's a very important thing for me during my recovery and helps me and so I want to start off by asking you what is your recovery birthday by recovery. Birth date is March 15th, 2018. All right, so you have a little over here about a year in a little over a year and a half now, my birthday is October 15th. So we have my year coming up and I'm very excited about that.

01:39 Hey Brother, start by talking about if you could talk to me about what was your life like while you were using and not answering to give me like more stories are but just what is that? What was it like for you?

01:58 You know.

02:01 But I think initially when I was young it was a

02:08 Tool maybe to fit in I always looked up to my older brother who is 10 years deceased and

02:21 He was he was rebellious. He kind of fit into that, you know rock and roll image, and I thought that was cool and as a kid.

02:34 My home life never really made sense and my parents never really made sense in my brother and his relationship made sense and the things that he did I found interesting and I found solace in in most of the things that he thought were cool, you know, whether it was music or art or reading. I don't know on an honest level talking about today how I actually into all those things. He was rather it may have been

03:05 It doesn't matter.

03:08 But I do know that as those interest progressed and

03:16 I guess our thought would have been out of stream with our parents.

03:25 His Rebellion picked up and I tried to mimic his and

03:31 And it was fun.

03:33 It was fun because then I had a way to get along with peers in school up until that point. I was never really like good at sports or anything like that. That was never really super great in school. I was funny and friendly and got along really well with people.

04:00 Why I always felt weird, you know.

04:05 I just

04:07 Did I hear it all the time from people that are in recovery or trying to get over whatever they just felt different and I still to this day at times just don't feel like I fit in and I feel a little bit weirder quote-unquote than the rest and that's my own personal shit. Anyway, it doesn't really matter. But when I was a kid, I wasn't like super great at one thing super greater than another that would have been, you know, they seem to fit in with what school and parents and all that would have wanted but I was fairly talented at

04:49 Making people laugh and getting along and getting people to do things together is always good at that. It ain't right.

05:00 He we just can't wait. I start it was fun. It was fun. When I was a kid and I school it looked like a lot of just young partying, you know, a lot of pot smoking and drinking and you know, as a progressive got a little bit harder and weird around the age of 16 17 18, you know got into some harder drugs and things like that, but at that age my brother also got into heroin and it scared the shit out of me.

05:35 And

05:41 Kind of trying to Shield myself from it and protect him or at least in my mind. I was protecting him from it by like, you know getting on to him or throwing his shit in the garbage can or whatever is stuff that didn't matter cuz I would later find out we're going to do what we do anyway.

06:01 So I split ice blue. I left Memphis at the age of 18 19 years old because of my feeling of not fitting in and just wasn't all that great Sports wasn't all that great in school. I went to a college preparatory school, but did not Excel because I did a bunch of drugs or high school and that just inevitably is not going to work, you know and decided that I was going to join Americorps in Washington state and I wanted to leave my family. I want to leave all the madness that had to do with my brother who I love so dearly, but I couldn't stand to be around because it was just too sick and I didn't understand what sickness at that age meant. I just knew that it meant

06:45 Something was off with him and it and it was light years Beyond me. You know, I laughed and thought I was going to go do something positive and I did do you think you felt you end up feeling like you couldn't protect him like you wanted to

07:02 Sure, but that yeah, absolutely it is mine. I think it it's in my nature and the more sort of self-discovery that I gained is it is my nature to want to nurture and whatever and help someone who seems down and all those things and I think that is in every human beings nature is that sort of side of compassion and empathy. It just takes time and willingness to develop it. However, I had no idea how to help that and I do think that I

07:38 I was angry at myself for not being able to and I used to beat myself up and I'll get on to my friends and family who would tell a man. What are you doing? This is like what are you doing? Trying to waste your time doing this this person is like nice that goes into you and there be times where I thought that maybe he was listening to me and he you know, I anyway I move to Washington State.

08:02 And it was perfect for me because I was detached from everything that was here. That was

08:13 Not foreign to me, but making me feel foreign to everyone else.

08:19 So I left and developed when I thought would be a new.

08:24 A new new real new real me and I will tell you that it was the most formative Year to year-and-a-half my life. I met some of the best most interesting.

08:39 People who are still to this day considered to be my dearest friends despite we decided we don't speak two of them 10 flag and Amanda Mclaughlin come and visit me. Once every New Year's New Year's Day we eat and we talked and we laughed and we mainly talked about that here in a half a tank because it was so I was very young and made a decision at that point to go out there and do something that was at the time contradictory to what the people in my high school or doing by High School. You didn't just do you went to college God damn it. That's what you did there and I guy ran it didn't suit me cuz I why would I go to college if I wasn't doing the ship for a college preparatory school to begin with? You know, I made no sense.

09:25 Anyway, I went and did that and I was able to do things that you're in trouble around and be around people who were really into books and music and movies and things of that nature that I thought that my brother had been invested in, but may have been more glossed over by drugs later on. So I got extremely passionate about these things, and I realized that I had a way of communicating with others, and I enjoyed riding in my dad to give me a notebook when I was about 18 years old in high school and said, this is going to be important to you later on areas of my graduation present, and it was and I did a lot of writing that year and the next year. I made her decision to move away from there cuz I want to go to school cuz I wanted to write so I moved to the University of Tennessee and Chattanooga and went to school for writing.

10:22 I did that and later on. I move my brother there.

10:27 Try and help him get off drugs only for him all of this. I was enjoying myself truly. Like life was fine. Like all of the it was it was in retrospect to what it became. It was minuscule amounts of party. It was nothing. It was just having a good time, right? And anyway, those my brother there and my alcohol use and drug use escalated.

11:03 And but I would stay away from opiates and I don't know know know I will you know, I will do everything there is but I don't know. I'm hoping it's cuz that's what real bad people do. And anyway, he eventually ended up passing away.

11:27 Due to the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction and I made a conscious decision and I say conscious because I truly decided after he died that I was going to get strung out on heroin and I spent the next decade to 11 years of my life highly highly strung out on heroin crystal meth and anything under the sun that I can drink shoots note snort or smoke and it was fucking ugly. I crisscrossed all over the country.

12:00 From

12:01 Phoenix Tattoo Boston to Seattle to Chattanooga to Atlanta to Asheville to Nashville to California all up and down, California.

12:16 There's there's other places in there doesn't matter.

12:22 Not even you know, I hear a lot of people say they're trying to run for a solution. I really was never ready. I was just trying to get like into the next fucking game, you know, Seattle had this fucking glamorous pass. Let's go there and fucking kick rocks like Kurt Cobain anyway.

12:44 It was horrible, you know, I

12:49 Spent a lot of time in like real homelessness, man. Not you know a man likes no good. I got to sleep on my buddies couch. Now. I'm talking about Real History living and it was ugly and it was painful and I'm still coping with the even the physical effects of that sort of Lifestyle. I'm only 33 years old and I've got an orthopedic telling me orthopedic doctor telling me my spine is out of a 55 to 60 year old man because of my hard living lifestyle for all those years.

13:27 I think that was a quick question. I wanted to

13:32 Kind of talk about what you lost during that. I lost every sense of self-respect. I'd ever I think that when we are born we are born inherently with every bit of self-worth we have

13:48 And experience allows as how to fucking begin to push that out of us right how to show that sense of self-worth in that sell fried and years of experience and some of that being trauma kind of damping that self-worth over and over and over again and

14:07 I solely wanted to become a shit head unit for being on his side. That is all I wanted. The only person I ever gave a fuck about on a real heartfelt level was dead when he was a junkie. What else did I what else was there, you know.

14:27 I the good person that loved others and treated others.

14:34 Growing up and that was well-liked for being friendly and funny and kind only became someone that knew how to use those characteristics to get what he wanted until those characteristics. He had bled those guy died completely blood those characteristics out of me and couldn't even use those to do those and I was simply just an asshole and I would steal from you and I was still from anywhere and I would consistently in jail and I was consistently trying to get out of jail and going to rehab and I'll get out of rehab and immediately go back to doing what I was doing cuz I was in so much absolute goddamn pain.

15:14 I could not find any sort of reason to exist and

15:22 There are still days when that sense of like what is the point of it? All comes swinging around? You know, like really what is the point? We are fucking alien just floating around on a rock in space. You know what I mean? Like in all actuality like but I lost everything. I never I never really I would I would get a job and I would lie to get that job and I would work that job for I don't know briefly.

15:56 And then I would do something fucked up either the blank shooting speedballs in the bathroom and you know, leaving needles there or like stealing from the restaurant drinking booze are on the clock around the clock to do is never stopped and I was like, you know, everyone kind of flowers at the word of heroin. So I just kind of keep it there but the booze slept keep the head then let's let that be known that that was full force all day all night.

16:29 And I would lose these jobs and end up. I never really got back on my feet after.

16:41 After my brother died, I can never stay settled in my own spot for longer than 6 months. I would hook up with some girl or whatever. They might have some money and they let me stay with them and I can call their place my place and was never my shit and is always someone else's ship. I never had any of them things. I never had anything and you know as as time progressed and I became more and more. My life was another another out her more mess mess mess mess mess the less. I cared about any of it. You know, I've told people in the past is like if I'm

17:15 If I had not

17:18 Sobered up and been able to learn how to hold down a job and become self-supporting. I wouldn't have given a shit about continuing to be homeless or whatever because I wouldn't have wanted to cares. It was never mine to begin with and my sense of self-worth was never there because it was all in a toilet somewhere in West Memphis. What was that moment that you decided? This is Aunt my fiance she and we are still together fiance now girlfriend, then she we had just gotten released from jail, and she could not squeaky went back to doing dope and she cannot she would not stop over those things. I didn't care about myself.

18:14 She has a child I did not care. And as far as I was concerned, I was a trash receptacle. I could not die. You could not kick the steel tank over, you know what I mean? So but she would without fail.

18:29 Do some heroin and overdose and I would resuscitate her and you know do CPR she would come to there were times when she was completely blue and then what happened and I remember being in the Kroger parking lot down the street from here sitting on a hill.

18:50 And sobbing to her and it takes it was like tears and feelings of like compassion for someone else because she died. I just revived her. She's just been revived and we are going to Kroger to steal some food to eat on the side of the hill and I remember sobbing to her saying I don't I can't watch you continue to die. So we made a decision to get our shift together and we both checked into Memphis Recovery Center about a week later. We pulled some very clandestine stuff to get in there cuz you're not supposed to enter that place in a relationship, but

19:34 Whatever 3 years down the road all the well in Love and War and it was it was not until I was in rehab.

19:47 That I began to give a fuck about my own life cuz like I said, I didn't go there I go I went there because I couldn't watch this happen to someone else over and over and over again. Like I couldn't in honestly it was taking so much out of me to have to continue to try and save her and I think selfishly I may have even been like fuck it like me even if I check out of rehab a week later like it doesn't matter. But while I was there something began to take hold and I began to want to stay and do what was right and

20:24 Suddenly began to help Comfort comfortable in a setting of people again and having a bed and a shower and all of these things and food to eat and and

20:39 Got out we got into a halfway house and I got a started working and

20:46 I'm not stopped working. That's all I've done is work and try and

20:55 Brothers been working man. I was given a job and my best friend offered me a job when I was six months over to come and work for him.

21:08 Add interim his name is Dave Krug interim restaurant Memphis. He tell me he told me long ago that if I got it at 6 months over and give me a job and I want six months over gave me a job that I started that day, and I'm not stopped working with him ever since and he

21:29 Was the person that was most instrumental in my recovery?

21:37 He was one of my brother's best friends. So to be able to connect with him now and then he was very very

21:48 Very empowering

21:52 Since then I don't know my life has been great.

22:02 What keeps you going, because this road to staying sober so it's a real struggle.

22:10 Yeah, honestly.

22:17 Do you know?

22:19 My life was so fucked.

22:22 And

22:25 I am pretty certain that the worst part of my life is over. Then. I know pretty much the root causes of those were my piss poor decision-making to constantly become a junkie.

22:41 That is not so much me my fear of

22:47 Not staying sober and as I've heard people say, you know to drink is to die and all that stuff and I get it spiritually it will but not my fear so much at 2.

22:59 Then I'm going to drink or use again. It's it's it is very hard to live in the present and I'm trying to learn how to do that more and more and more each day, you know, cuz if here's how I think of it if you smoked as much meth and crack cocaine shot is most dope and drink as much booze as I did and evidently you have fucked your brain up staying present when your ship was so hyper shot off.

23:30 All right, very long time and then to try and real it all back in.

23:37 It takes a significant amount of self-control. Do you think any of that has to do with your spiritual spirituality? And yes, I think I'll do whatever that means to you. I think all of it does because I I could not do I doubt I will say that another thing that keeps me going is the fact that I had for the first time in my life and it's not the first time anymore. It's been a while now. I have true responsibilities and I have a fiance and we have a daughter together sure. She is allowing me to help raise her daughter as though she were mine and I truly think of that is a fucking blessing because she's amazing.

24:15 Anyway, those are the things that keep me going. You know, I have people that rely on me. No one ever relied on me before I have a lot of people rely on me. There's an entire restaurant full of people right now. They're lying me an entire restaurant that is being built for me to help go run there in Clio MI at this point.

24:34 That's there's so much.

24:37 And I don't feel pressured by it and that is all due to the spiritual component that you're talkin about write. My crazy ass should feel fucking absolutely out of control at all times with the idea of being a first-time parent, you know, the movie hunt him getting married with the idea of you know, having a job helping open helping open a restaurant be in charge of the restaurant that attitude when I used to shoot dope steel needles out of fucking other people's homeless tents and sleep on fucking dumpsters.

25:10 But my cat understands me well enough to understand that. I have to remain somewhat centered in order to do all of these various things. So thank God for that.

25:25 And spirituality for me is nothing more than I'm not in control, right? I am not in control.

25:37 That's not at all that is and I know that you just spoke about being in the moment and you often come bring me bring me back when I'm going off in my head and and I agree with you know, I'm learning.

25:53 That it's not so much.

25:57 Wanting to use but having a spiritual connection with whatever I decide that is and being in this moment and observing what is going on with me and have her resent her move back to that higher power so to speak.

26:13 And realizing that that hire power shows up in this moment at work with you. I'm going to you to ask you to be my first sponsor and opening up to you. Even after my first my relapse a year ago. What you did for me pulling me aside is like what can I do for you? How can I help you? And there was no judgement.

26:37 And okay, you're fired from your job.

26:40 What can I do? What can we has do restaurant do for you?

26:47 Well, I would like I said a part of what I want or the main thing that I lost cuz I never had anything to begin with was my sense of self and that comes and all of that was regained through spirituality, which you know what I said, I detach completely from everybody to wear at the end for like the past 4 to 5 years. No one wanted to be around me.

27:11 The only way for me to reconnect with anything in a higher power at that point was fairly certain obvious that it could be through others. Right? Right, and that's what I was told. So if you always told me is like you've got a connecting you got to get back in at that point when I had met you I had a little bit of time under my belt.

27:29 And I had a little bit of sanity and it was incredibly effective for me and my recovery at that point as well to be able to listen to and help you process or talk about or walk through whatever the hell you were going through on that particular day because it was all extremely reminiscent of my own and it took me out with myself and at that time I was starting a brand new job or brand new position in a job that I had never felt before.

28:01 And I my

28:05 Awareness of myself needed to consistently be leveled right? It's going from a junkie to a head chef in a fucking here is pretty fucking slick quick doesn't really happen. So your head can either go from 0 to fucking skyrockets but to have and be able to talk to you and then go. Oh fuck. I'm still crazy every single day and have the mirror be fucking shining back in my face was extremely humbling and real and honest and important and there was a massive amount spiritual connection that I could feel every single day.

28:38 And it was a reminder as well at my point on this Earth is not going to go cook some silly-ass food wherever the fuck that may be rather to continue to approach life as this opportunity to give back and connect, you know, I remembered when we initially started working together. You said to me I love you, man. And I was like, don't you ever say that to me again? Don't try to hug me.

29:04 I couldn't handle that. I couldn't accept that. I didn't know what to do with that because like you said my sense of self-worth was gone, you know thinking back what I did to win using the situations. I put myself in the people I hung around.

29:21 It was just dumped on me double me use me, and that's exactly what happened and overtime you kept saying I love you. I love you and you showed up for me you listen to me and I have now reached a point.

29:34 Or I can say I love you and have that feeling of what that means.

29:41 And

29:43 Think about you know for me there was always the worries a gay male you as a heterosexual male.

29:48 I can't say that to you because you may misconstrue that but it came to a point where I could say that and I began to accept and feel what that meant to love somebody else and care for somebody else and be in the moment with them, but you consistently did that with me and then expect me to say it back but he came and it's now allowed me.

30:11 To open up to other men, which I think is difficult for many men and generally care about them. I love you. What can I do for you? And a lot of that is come from you.

30:23 Know which means a lot to me.

30:28 Which is why I want to do this interview that you know, just kind of

30:33 Because I'm not so much focus on.

30:35 What your pass was like but where you are now and how you helped others and how I see you're so nice of movement towards helping others by

30:48 By asking her by saying you know how my recovery helps others.

30:56 There is so often when I

31:03 I don't know in recovery. So personal, you know, I think that is I think that is the intrinsic message that needs to be given to everyone ever entering recovery is never try and make your shit look like anybody else is cuz it is a personal exploration that you are recovering as a human fucking being that is a complete overall from toenail to fucking hair follicle brother. You know what I mean Frank there is nothing nothing to him same other than the fucking disease if we're looking at that sort of particular model, right?

31:37 So because like I said, all I did was work when I got so angry cuz I was so invested in the idea of being a family man. That's wooden my mind I said you did was you work your ass off and that's what my dad always didn't you providing the shit?

31:52 Dave the man I mentioned gave back to me so much and that first year that I spent with him an interim that that's how I developed in the mindset of what recovery one you can one of these same Frame Works of kindness and spirituality into what is typically a hard-nosed male-driven egocentric. Fuck you Cutthroat environment here not run that and I refuse to ever be a part of something like that ever again, and I when I got the job at the restaurant you and I work at

32:25 Day one made inactive decision to develop and Foster that same sort of growth and kindness ends that kitchen that we work in which is counterintuitive to what people would think given the fact that we work for a cut and corporate restaurant right corporate people tend to you don't bottom line all the time. They don't give a shit about where you're at on a going to give him particular day of the week. I'm going to be real with you dog. Don't like the food there is insanely easy for me to cook and it's pretty easy to teach. So if I can take my time to teach people how to treat one another or help, you know guy that message along then win win because that's what was done for me and that's continues to what help me grow.

33:13 That's how my recovery works today in all fairness people come to me outside of here and I've been asked to be people sponsors to hang out or whatever and to get you know, and you know, my fiance will actually she can I sing like that all the time and she will say if you want to talk to him if you go to work, that's where it happens and I am extremely fortunate that Dave is opening his restaurant delivery in East Memphis and it offered me the position of being his Chef De Cuisine there and I hope and I see it that we will run it in the same sort of compassionate.

33:49 Good environment for people feel safe and open and supported and we will also put out what will be the best food in the city. I'm certain of it.

34:00 So, you know, I want to close by you know staying. Thank you.

34:05 And letting you know.

34:08 Evaluate how valuable you are to me and how you continue to affect me and help me move in my recovery and not only my recovery process but

34:21 Thinking outside of my head and how can I help others in Sims? You know asking me when I'm agitated with somebody at work or

34:32 How can you be useful and it just turns me back around a hundred eighty degrees and I'm like I get angry at you at first you every time you do that for me because it redirects me into the fact that now I have to live up to what I just told you to say and do right it is I try and be a person of integrity and character until if I'm going to tell someone who I consider one of my dearest friends to redirect their thinking regarding something silly that's pissing them off and I better be willing to later on down the road when I want to pop off, you know, so it's at the constant reminder and it's how I'm able to slow down and send her and things of that nature as well. So I love the shit out of him and I appreciate you I did I love you as well and you don't even now as I say that I'm so comfortable in my body and Sol in my spirit is saying that in

35:25 Amazing thing and I

35:29 Say that you have helped me get there and now I'm able to share your gift to me with others and

35:37 Lead by example and just contribute something to this world to put out some positive energy. So

35:45 Everything you do. I am grateful for I'm grateful for you and your friendship Doug. Thank you so much. Thank you for the opportunity and asked me to come do this man II I'll be honest at the end of a Monday, and I'm a little tired and kind of dragging its thought of it, but this has been an exceedingly exceeded my expectations and thank you.